I walked into a small Subway on a retail park the other day to find a small wall covering the glass that housed the various fillings for the sandwiches that you can buy in front of which were three touch screens for ordering your food and drinks with card machines next to each one to pay for your order.
There were two staff working away and paying next to no attention to me. They had Bluetooth headphones in and were concentrating on their work behind the counter. There was not so much as a hello. I ordered the food and drinks for me and my family and sat down. The only interaction I had with a staff member was one of them telling me my food was ready, which had been left by the unused till for me to collect.
I was in shock at the lack of interaction, which to me is central to good customer service. While sitting waiting for my order I was reminded of watching three people at work in the cafeteria area sat around a table, each looking at their mobile phone and not talking to each other. They were all in their early twenties. I’m in my forties so I remember life before the internet and mobile phones, so this seemed really strange to me. However, I appreciate that it is normal now.
I am aware that businesses like Subway and McDonalds have moved to touch screens for placing orders for the purposes of efficiency and saving money, as you need less staff, and the infinite scroll has made mobile phones into addictive slot machines where you pull down and win another hit of dopamine, but for all this use of devices in the absence of interaction exists because we have given permission to society by accepting it as normal.
The thing is, we are a social species and to our brains it is not normal to use devices in the absence of human interaction and it breads isolation, loneliness and the inability to start and hold a conversation. My generation fumbled our way through learning how to converse with each other but those in their mid-twenties and younger have not had that because it is easier to hide behind a mobile phone.
Conversing with another human being is a skill that seems to be lost and when we don’t look each other in the eye we become divided. We lose the sense that we are more alike than we are different. We all need to go on a diet from our devices and talk to each other, learn from each other, laugh with each other and cry with each other. We need community.
The Fullfilment Project 